GMOD after the Combine
by Brighter-Than-A-Thousand-Suns
Summary: Life as a "sandboxer" after the Combine invasion can be exciting. Or boring. Or mildly entertaining. Or painful. Depends on who you ask. Try asking The Night Fox. He'll tell you his stories of the GMOD world. There's nothing better to do.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is not about people PLAYING Gmod, it is meant to be of them actually in the world of Garry's Mod.

"Shiiiiiiiiit! I'm going down! Help!"

"Shadow, rocket on your tail!"

"Dammit, we just lost Silver!"

"Entrance two is blocked, I repeat, entrance two is blocked by rubble!"

I tuned most of this out. We were in the middle of a large deathmatch on the gm flatgrass map, and my side was losing. I was in the control room with four of my other team members, and we were fighting from there. I was at the control panel, opening doors, giving orders, setting off dynamite and turrets, CRC was up in the roof shooting out of the custom built firing port, Eonix was keeping an eye on the battle through thirty cameras and Zoh was getting ready to head for his foxhole.

It had started off with thirty vs thirty, but had soon declined to twenty vs ten, us with the ten. We soon dropped to seven, and they still had twenty. Our base was larger than theirs, in fact, ours was massive. There were three separate sections, all joined by a network of tunnels, some of which had holes to shoot from or were transparent. There were four entrances, two with doors and the other two ending in foxholes from which we could shoot relatively safely. The main control base was the best defended, with two sets of walls, each about two meters apart as explosions could pass through walls.

"Aircraft coming in fast!" yelled another team member, out in the foxhole. "I-ahhh!"

Shit. Six left.

"All remaining personal, return to main command center one!" I called over the radio. One of them, Jimmy, made it. The other died. Five people remained.

"OK, guys, things look bleak." A large crash came from the outside wall. "We are all going to have to fly. On the command, each go your separate ways, and take an escape pod. Meet up at the edge of the map. OK...Jimmy, route one, go to command post two and erase the wall. Go! Zoh, looks like you're going to your foxhole after all."

"But there is no escape route there!" he protested,

"Spawn a dumpster when you get there and escape under that. CRC, take the Jalopy from Command Post Two. Eonix, looks like you're taking the rocket."

"Night Fox, what about you?" he asked,

"Don't worry, I have a plan. But before you two leave, we're gonna take a few of these bastards down."

CRC went up to the firing port, Eonix spawned dynamite and I began powering up all weapons systems.

A massive thump. The other team had just suppressed our outer wall.

"F**k!" yelled CRC, "I didn't know they could do that!"

"It'll take some time to power up again. CRC, see if you can take down the guy operating it."

I switched on my radio. "Zoh, Jimmy, you guy's OK?"

"I'm under the dumpster. Oh shit, they saw me. Rocket coming!" *explosion* "Ah!!! Fire!!! F**k, f**k, f**k-" he went silent.

"Shit, we just lost Zoh. Jimmy, you OK?"

"Fine. I blocked the tunnel."

It may not have been the time, but I spawned a drink and took a sip. I then began placing explosive barrels in the place I guessed the other team would suppress next. The suppressor began to heat up.

"Shit! OK...wait..." The wall disappeared. "GO!"

I set off all the weapons and blew up the explosive barrels, Eonix set off his dynamite and CRC slid down from the firing port and we all took our separate tunnels as the enemies began to pour into our base. As I ran for my escape route, I firing a few bullets and an energy ball from my AR2. I got near the door at the end of my tunnel, opened it, passed through, then closed it. The enemies got stuck out there. I knew it wouldn't be long before they found a way through. I was now in a small room with several panes of one way glass and a badly built aircraft. Through the glass I saw a massive rocket launch, a seat trailing at the back. Looking through the other side I saw a Jalopy driving away and Jimmy running. Jumping into the aircraft (a seat, two doors, and thrusters), I opened the other door. Suddenly, I realized I had never test driven this craft.

"A bit late for that now, Fox." I muttered to myself, setting off the thrusters.

The craft shot out of the room, skidded across the ground for a few seconds and then floated into the air. It was zooming along too fast and also flipped upside down. I couldn't turn it and it zigzagged all over the place. I had no clue where I was, the landscape was moving too fast for me to make out any bases.

After about a minute I said to myself, "Ah, shit, this is ridiculous." And I jumped out.

Lucky for me, the plane (if you could call it a plane) was relatively near the ground at that point and I didn't fall too far. However, I still crumpled as I hit the ground and was defenseless for a few minutes. Finally I picked myself up and managed to limp to the edge of the map where the rest of the survivors were arriving. All of us, except Zoh, had made it. Even so, there was still only four of us against sixteen of the enemies.

"OK, guys, we aren't going to stay here long. We are going to storm their base. But for now we need a few defenses so we can recover. I don't think they know we are here yet. Set up a small room from which we can defend."

"Storm their base?! Are you crazy?!" CRC exploded.

"The best defense is a good offense." I replied. "Besides, if we want to win this, we will have to sometime."

We began to build the base, if you could call our small hunk of metal a base. Just as we were finishing, the other team noticed us and began moving toward our new location. No one noticed, until I saw a red dot at the feet of Eonix.

"Eonix! Look out!" I yelled at him. He had no time to do anything, and so, just in time, I grabbed a dumpster with my physics gun and pulled it in the path of the rocket. It intercepted the rocket, saving Eonix's life.

"They've found us!" yelled Jimmy, even though we all already knew that and were running into our half finished base. I pressed a button on my arm and the door closed. When we were all in place for the coming attack, I scrolled through the icons on my arm until I found the cans of soda. I spawned a few and tossed them to everyone. Rockets began to hit our base, but we had layered enough and they didn't reach us. Their suppression device wouldn't work, either, as we had layered twelve walls, so it would take them too long. Then, completely unexpectedly, a grenade came through the firing port, from which CRC was...well...firing. It didn't click like regular grenades, instead released gas. Before I had time to do anything, I blacked out.

When I came to, I was in a small, bare room with the others. They were all also waking.

"Uh...what happened?" I grunted to the others.

"I assume this is their base." said Jimmy, the most conscious out of us.

"Why...why didn't they kill us?" I asked him.

"No clue. But it doesn't look like we're gonna escape; they took our weapons and have wired a spawn blocker. What do we do?"

"Kill command?" suggested CRC, also coming to.

"No." I said. "If you ask me, there's no happiness in death. No peace either. I'm getting out of here alive." CRC's finger hovered over the kill button on his arm, then decided against it.

At that moment a wall slid away and one of the other team came in, brandishing a AR2.

"I-" he began. I tackled him. He fell to the ground, I grabbed his AR2 and began beating him with it. He managed to draw his magnum, but Eonix got that and shot him before he could pull out another. Jimmy and CRC took his other weapons. The door was still open, so we ran out and tried to find enemies to kill. We took down four without sustaining any major damage (11 left, as we had killed the other guy). It was when we were assaulted by seven people at once that we lost Jimmy, and CRC was badly injured. He was killed before we killed the rest of that platoon. Eonix and I finished the rest, and went to find the remaining four.

"Looks like we could win this, Fox." Eonix said to me. That was when he was hit full on by a rocket. I don't know why they were firing rockets in their own base, but they did. Eonix survived, but only just. I ran in front of him and he crawled behind a corner to recover. I began firing wildly, but it was four on one, and they had more ammunition then me. I ran out after killing one, and tried to run, but was hit by five rounds in the back of my head. I fell to the ground and cursed before dieing.

Now I became a speculator, unseen by any except my fellow speculators. Eonix was still alive, but I didn't care. I angrily slammed the "Home" button on my arm, and was immediately transported home.


	2. Chapter 2 Life as a Sandboxer

I should probably explain. My real name is Edwin Daemon, but people are seldom called by their names anymore. I am a sandboxer. A horrible term, I know, but I didn't come up with it. There were about two hundred people like me. The combine, now having taken over, and everyone for that matter, knew of our existence, but no one acknowledged it, as something like that could get you killed. We were originally normal humans, like everyone else, but then a man, Garry Newman was his name, developed a technology, very complex, that allowed humans to control the world around them, create things, and pull tools and weapons out of thin air. Garry's eventual plan was for every human to be able to do that, but alas, the combine came and slaughtered him. Stupid of them, really, as that meant they could not get his technology, unless they already had it.

Also, we sandboxers were able to create places with unique properties and catered to our own personal tastes. This was where we deathmatched. Someone would create a map and invite a group of us to it. We would go there, get time to build a base and then fight each other. Sometimes, if we were killed we would just be recreated (spawned was the term) in a map, but other times we would not be able to continue playing until one team had won. The pain was real (but dulled), but the death wasn't. People could not be killed in these maps. Even if they could, none of us would join them as we all knew the importance of keeping our new race alive.

Real places were counted as maps, too. For example, the city (City Fourteen I believe it was) was a common place I went to, and that was named gm_bigcity, which was what I would type into my computer or arm when I wanted to go there.

Each sandboxer got their own home, as well. Every regular citizen lived in the city, but Garry had assigned every sandboxer a map of his own. Too bad that they were all the same and the most boring map ever: gm_flatgrass. Some sandboxers spruced up their maps, with houses and fauna, but I was too lazy to. I also saw no point in building a house, as a house is built to protect you against the weather, which there was none of here. Nothing ever happened. Literally. The grass didn't ever grow, it never got dark and the temperature always stayed the same. The map was just a large, grassy square with a concrete, slightly raised platform in the center. This was where our computers were situated, and where I spent most of my time. I didn't really do anything. I sat in front of my desk, which I deleted and respawned commonly, all day, thinking, drinking soda, and sometimes just swiveling in my chair.

Occasionally people would send me a message on my computer, usually asking if I wanted to deathmatch. Sometimes I said yes, sometimes no.

The lives of most of us sandboxers were boring; a few had gotten jobs as handymen, others builders, but most of us just sat around all day, drinking soda. We didn't have to go into the cities, so usually we didn't. Also, if we did go into the cities there was a risk of being found out by the combine. It was a boring existence.

Today started off like every other day: waking up on a lumpy, cold mattress in the center of gm_flatgrass. I stood up, deleted the mattress, checked my computer for messages (there were none) and spawned a soda and some food. I sat eating it, finished it, and with nothing else to do, I spawned some more and started eating that. By the time I was up to my seventh serving, something to stop my eating happened (most mornings I would do this, often getting up to thirty servings). My computer buzzed into life, Eonix's face on it.

"Hey Fox." he said. Before he could continue, I butted in.

"I wish you couldn't just start the call. For all you know, I was jacking off."

He rolled his eyes. "It's eleven thirty in the morning. I knew you would be eating breakfast, about your fifteenth serving."

I shook my head. "I slept in today. Only up to my seventh." My odd habits were known by all.

"Say, did you see the results of last night's deathmatch? We lost, but they only had two left by the end of it. Anyway, me and Dave are heading into town today. We're gonna meet up with Michelle, lilbrit and Kami. Ya wanna tag along?"

I knew it wasn't for enjoyment that he wanted me to come. It was unsafe to travel the streets of City Fourteen alone, as the combine preyed upon small groups.

"Yeah...I guess." I replied reluctantly.

"Why so unwilling? You're just gonna spend today sitting here along doing nothing if you don't come. Anyway, I've no doubt Michelle and that will appreciate the extra sandboxer."

Michelle, lilbrit and Kami were a few of our non sandboxer friends. We were generally liked by the human population, and hated by the combine.

I sighed. "Yeah, OK. I'll come."

"Sweet. See you there in a few?"

"Yeah. Bye." I shut off the communication.

I searched through the buttons on my arm and decided what weapons I would take with me. In the end, I took a shotgun, AR2, Magnum, and assorted Pills. Pills were these strange things you could attach to your arm and they would temporarily turn you into a creature. I had pills for virtually every creature I knew of, both fictional and real. I decided to take the one to turn me into an arachnid, from the movie "Starship Troopers", to turn me into an antlion, antlion worker, antlion guard and vortigaunt. For disguises I would merely change my model. As well as weapons and pills, I, of course, had my toolgun and physics gun, physgun for short.

Ready to go, I went back to my console and typed in "gm_bigcity". While it began to power up the teleporter, I looked at my teleport history. It was like this:

_gm_bigcity_

gm_flatgrass

gm_acacia_avenue

gm_acacia_avenue

gm_acacia_avenue

gm_acacia_avenue

gm_acacia_avenue

gm_construct

gm_flatgrass_v5

gm_acacia_avenue

gm_disco

gm_new worlds

gm_acacia_avenue

gm_acacia_avenue

Acacia Avenue was the name of a map a sandboxer had made, and was our...gentleman's club. OK, I'll admit, I went there too much, but hey, what else was there to do?

The loading was complete, the teleporter fired up. I pressed the large, green GO button, and was transported to City 14.

I was teleported into a small room in a small apartment. We had set that up after the growing risk of being caught by the combine from seeing us teleport in. The others were in the room, and so after they complained of me taking too long, we left the room and went to the streets.

The city was horrible these days. There was a combine on every corner, and it wasn't uncommon to see them beating, shooting or arresting citizens for no particular reason. They watched us closely as we crossed the courtyard, but didn't do anything. The venture (how sad was it that a trip through town could be called a venture?) was rather uneventful, until we were heading back to the apartment. Two combine stopped us.

"Citizens. Illegal social conduct detected. Move away."

"They're warm and inviting." I muttered stupidly. The second combine whacked me across the head with his stun stick. My sight exploded into white dots.

"First warning." It said. "Separate now."

We began to move away, too slowly for the combine, apparently. They came down on Kami, beating him to the ground with their stun sticks, and not stopping even after he stopped moving.

"What are you doing?!" screamed Michelle,

"Get the hell away from him!" I yelled at the Civil Protection. Lilbrit and davedemon (Dave) slowly edged away. Eonix was with me, yelling at them to stop. I drew my Magnum and shot the CP's. More came and started drawing their pistols, as well as a few with SMG's and some actual Overwatch. Not the elite, just regular Overwatch. They had AR2's and SMG's.

"Eonix! Grab Michelle and follow me!"

He did as I said, picking her up while I grabbed Kami's corpse with my physgun. Then we ran. I considered teleporting home, but that would leave Michelle alone here, and I wanted to get back at the CP's for perhaps killing Kami.

We ran towards the tallest building in the city. I had a plan.


End file.
